Eyeing the World With a Bright Light

Menu

Tag Archives: Alliance Defense Fund

In too many instances, public school teachers tell Christian students they cannot include their faith in their homework assignments or classroom discussions. However, the U.S. Department of Education has issued guidelines explaining students’ religious liberties. Students can pray, read their Bibles, and talk about their faith at school during school hours. They can organize prayer groups and Bible studies and announce their meetings. They can express their faith in their class work and homework. — Gateways to Better Education

LA CHURCH & STATE EXAMINER

In an effort to increase awareness for Religious Freedom Day (Jan. 16), two advocacy groups have launched Religious Freedom Sunday planned for next week.

Gateways to Better Education and the Alliance Defense Fund are calling for Religious Freedom Sunday to be a national event in which churches honor the educators within their congregations and inform their members about the freedom of religious expression for students from kindergarten through 12th grade have at school… read more

LACONIA, New Hampshire — A homeschooled girl has been ordered into government-run public school for having a “bit too sincerely held” Christian beliefs, according to a legal team specializing in religious liberty defense.
In a report available online at the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) Web site, it states:

“Although the marital master making recommendations to the court agreed the child is ‘well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising, and intellectually at or superior to grade level’ and that ‘it is clear that the home schooling…has more than kept up with the academic requirements of the…public school system,’ he nonetheless proposed that the Christian girl be ordered into a government-run school after considering ‘the impact of [her religious] beliefs on her interaction with others.’ The court approved the order.”

ADF allied attorney John Anthony Simmons has filed motions with a New Hampshire court, asking it to reconsider its order to send the 10-year-old homeschooled girl into public school.

Simmons said the court acknowledges that the girl in question is doing well socially and academically, but he adds that the court went too far when they determined that the girl’s Christian faith was a “bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews.”

Simmons contends that parents have a “fundamental right to make educational choices for their children.” However, the girl’s parents divorced in 1999, and she is now living with her mother who has been homeschooling the child since first grade. As part of the schooling, the young girl has been attending supplemental public school classes.

As part of parental custody hearings, a court-appointed guardian (marital master) stated that the child reflected her mother’s “rigidity” on questions of faith and added that girl’s best interest would be served by exposure to a public school setting.

According to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Home Education is an enduring American tradition and right. ADF concludes, based on that statement, that there is no legitimate legal basis for this latest court ruling.

It’s a given that the Christian faith is under attack in the U.S. on many fronts. Secularists, agnostics, and atheists emboldened by the false understanding of what America’s forefathers meant by the separation of church and state have filed lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.

By ALEXANDER

So paranoid of a “Christian influence” are some of these groups, that suits are now filed at the mere whiff of anything even remotely spiritual.

A federal appeals court upheld on Monday a Texas law allowing students to observe a moment of silence at the beginning of each school day.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed a district court ruling, rejecting a North Texas couple’s claim that the moment of silence law, which took effect in 2003, was unconstitutional.

The panel ruled that the statute is “facially neutral between religious and non-religious activities that students can choose to engage in during the moment of silence.”

After the ruling, David Cortman, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case last year, stated, “A moment of silence is not a government endorsement of religion just because someone might use the time for prayer.

“No student is compelled to pray under the Texas law. The 5th Circuit was right to uphold the district court’s determination that the law is not an establishment of religion.”

Afraid of silence…

In 2006, David and Shannon Croft sued on behalf of their three children, who attend school in the Carrolton-Farmers Branch Independent School District. They argued that the 2003 amendment that specified the moment of silence as a time for students to “reflect, pray, meditate, or engage in any other silent activity that is not likely to interfere with or distract another student” was an endorsement of prayer.

Better than Ritalin…

Texas Attorney General Abbott who maintained that the 2003 statute was constitutional, commented, “The United States Constitution plainly protects young Texans’ right to observe a moment of silence before school each morning.”

“In an age where children are bombarded with distractions, beginning each school day with a moment of silence offers a welcome moment of quiet contemplation,” he added.

To be intolerant of a moment of silence is lunacy. Perhaps some of us Americans need to take the iPod earplugs out of our ears, turn off the cell phone, get away from the TV, enter a quiet place and listen…someone may be calling you. May you find Him now!
_______________

Publicity boosts Christian program; group moved event to avoid conflict

Agnostics and atheists are religiously playing the separation of church and state card in all areas of American life. While they may claim victory in some areas, ultimately they will lose. I’ve read the Good Book, I know who wins in the end.

“It was a full house and if we would have held it in Kimberly we would have had to turn away about 250 people,” event coordinator Julie Nygaard said. “The Alliance Defense Fund was there for us too.”

Created by Christian author Dannah Gresh, the Secret Keeper Girl Bod Squad Tour for girls in grades three through six offers tips on dressing modestly. The location of the mother-daughter event was changed Friday from Kimberly High School to Christ the Rock Community Church in response to a letter from Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

A national group of atheists and agnostics also took the public school district to task Monday over its ties to the event.